g'day seeing as tyhough im doing stuff to my tank i thought i'd put my tank in here.. please dont laugh i know its nothing special it was an impulse buy on saturday and i have no experience and never owned any pets.. this will one day be a Cherry Red Shrimp tank with a few plants and stuff..

this is what i had first and very boring

yesterday i went and bought some gravel and some grassy stuff cant remember the name.. and then today i went to get a small chunk of drift wood but none where right.. so i went for the smalled "rock"thing and it looked fine but didnt realise how big it was till i got home.. its not too bad i spose..

still deciding weather ill keep it.. or turn it on its side and bury it or something.. get rid of it.. keep it for my big tank (if i ever upgrade

just some random pics..
before rock
plant food and deÁhlorine stuff :S
left side view
2 full shots

The shrimp will love that with all the hiding spots. A small piece of driftwood would look great, as you said. Maybe some plants attached to the rock, wood, etc. I would personally get more of the gravel for the plants, and some Malaysian Trumpet Snails (they are plant safe) to keep the sand stirred.

there is more gravekl tahn it looks like.. about half the tank is covered.. yer i was gonna get some MTS this arve .. is it wise to cut a small piece of fresh cooked fish and put it in the tank for help with the cycle and bacteria and stuff??

Not sure about cooked fish, but raw fish should work fine. I've used raw prawns to cycle tanks before and they worked great. You may want to place it in a filter media bag or some pantyhose for easy removal after the tank has cycled.

The rock is pretty big, but it looks like just the kind of thing the shrimp would love crawling all over and picking at.

How big is the tank? Because of their tiny bioloads, people actually have a lot of success with having *tons* of shrimp in tanks in the 10g range. They actually do better in bigger colonies than smaller ones!

but i personally would either wrap the rock in a towel and smack it with a hammer the arrange the smaller pieces in the tank or save it for another tank and wait and find a nice small piece of driftwood.

i do see 1 problem with the gravel sitting ontop of the sand. eventually you prob. will find the sand ontop of the gravel.

im almost positive you didnt mention this tanks size, so what is it? also what lights are you planning on using?

sorry it is about 26L... and the light at the moment is a 18w (100w) coil energy saver 4100k cool day.. (dont know if its good) i got two little guppies (i think) from my dads tank i have a picture or two of each.. to help with the cycling of the tank... asked at pet shop today about snails and fertilizer.. no luck on the ferts but she told me cause i have sand subgrade that i wont be able to have any fish or snails cause sand is a buffer and will always have a high PH level.. so i dunno.. there is no sand under the gravel.. they are separate.. also my plants are getting worse i think.. starting to discolour more..

What you were told about the sand is bunk. If you bought something like ocean sand with lots of crushed coral or crushed sea shells and therefore was skyhigh with calcium. However a play sand is mostly quartz and inert. I went through the same thing with the guy at my LFS when I told him I had a sand bottom he freaked until I explained it was play sand not ocean.

Not possitive what the first fish is, but fairly certain the second one is (what we call in the states) an Australian Rainbowfish.

yer that rings a bell i think he just calls it a rainbow even if its not haha.. they are just hiding in the shadow of "the rock" at the moment..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyyrlym

Yeah, neither of those are guppies.

What you were told about the sand is bunk. If you bought something like ocean sand with lots of crushed coral or crushed sea shells and therefore was skyhigh with calcium. However a play sand is mostly quartz and inert. I went through the same thing with the guy at my LFS when I told him I had a sand bottom he freaked until I explained it was play sand not ocean.

thats what i wanted to hear.. ill go to the first one i went to and see what i can do..